Decision Science News

SEEKING MATHEMATICALLY & COMPUTATIONALLY SKILLED APPLICANTS

Microsoft Research NYC seeks outstanding applicants with strong quantitative and programming skills for a postdoctoral researcher position in the area of online experimental social science.

Deadline for Full Consideration: January 11, 2013

Online experimental social science involves using the web, including crowdsourcing platforms such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, to study human behavior in “virtual lab” environments. Among other topics, virtual labs have been used to study the relationship between financial incentives and performance, the honesty of online workers, advertising impact as a function of exposure time, the implicit cost of “bad ads”, the testing of graphical user interfaces eliciting probabilistic information and also the relationship between network structure and social dynamics, related to social phenomena such as cooperation, learning, and collective problem solving. Eligible applicants must hold a Ph.D. in Computer Science, Experimental Economics, Experimental Psychology, Statistics, Mathematical Sociology or a related field. The ideal applicant will possess a diverse mix of skills, including awareness of the theoretical and experimental social science literature, and experience with experimental design, as well as demonstrated statistical modeling and programming expertise. Programming knowledge should include server-side and browser-side languages, interaction with databases and third party APIs and facility with the R language for statistical computing. Specific experience running experiments on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk or related crowdsourcing websites, as well as managing virtual participant pools is also desirable, as is evidence of UI design ability. Postdoc researcher positions at Microsoft Research provide emerging scholars (Ph.D.s received in 2012 or to be conferred by July 2013) an opportunity to develop their research career and to interact with some of the top minds in the research community. The position also offers the potential to have research realized in products and services that will be used worldwide. Postdoc researchers are invited to define their own research agenda and demonstrate their ability to drive forward an effective program of research.

Postdoc researchers receive a competitive salary and benefits package, and are eligible for relocation expenses. Postdoc researchers are hired for a two-year term appointment following the academic calendar, starting in July 2013. Applicants must have completed the requirements for a Ph.D., including submission of their dissertation, prior to joining Microsoft Research. We do accept applicants with tenure-track job offers from other institutions so long as they are able to negotiate deferring their start date to accept our position.

About MSR-NYC
Microsoft Research provides a vibrant multidisciplinary research environment with an open publications policy and close links to top academic institutions around the world. Microsoft Research New York City is the most recent MSR lab, comprising 16 full-time researchers and postdocs, working on theoretical and applied aspects of machine learning and information retrieval, computational and online experimental social science, and algorithmic and experimental economics. The lab is highly collaborative and interdisciplinary, and its members also maintain active links both with the local academic and tech communities.

For more information about the lab, visit:

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/labs/newyork/default.aspx

To apply for a postdoc position at MSR-NYC:

1. Submit an online application at:

https://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/jobs/fulltime.aspx

* Indicate that your research area of interest is “Online Experimental Social Science” and that your location preference is “New York.” Include the name of a Microsoft Research contact if you have one.

* In addition to the CV and names of three referees (including your dissertation advisor) that the online application will require you to include, upload the following 3 attachments with your online application: a) two conference or journal articles, book chapters, or equivalent writing samples (uploaded as 2 separate attachments); b) an academic research statement (approximately 3-4 pages) that outlines your research achievements and agenda.

2. After you submit your application, send an email to msrrt@microsoft.com (copy the Microsoft Research contacts you identified in step 1, if any) alerting us that you have uploaded your application. If an applicant meets the requirements above, a request for letters will be sent to your list of referees on your behalf. All letters of recommendation must be received by the deadline for full consideration of the application. Please make sure to check back with your referees or us if you have any questions about the status of your requested letters of recommendation. For more information, see:

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/jobs/fulltime/postdoc.aspx

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINE: DECEMBER 15, 2011

Hi Folks – This year BDRM will back back to back with with Boulder Summer Conference on Consumer Financial Decision Making. What an excellent reason to attend both!

What: 2012 Boulder Summer Conference on Consumer Financial Decision Making
When: June 24-26, 2012
Where St. Julien Hotel, Boulder, Colorado
Deadline for Submitting Abstracts: Dec. 15, 2011

To submit an extended abstract (1 page single spaced), please visit the conference website http://leeds.colorado.edu/event/bouldersummerconference#overview and click on the Submit Paper Abstract link.

Conference Overview
Consumer welfare is strongly affected by household financial decisions large and small: choosing mortgages; saving to fund college education or retirement; using credit cards to fund current consumption; choosing how to “decumulate” savings in retirement; deciding how to pay for health care and insurance; and investing in the stock market, managing debt in the face of financial distress. This conference brings together outstanding scholars from around the world in a unique interdisciplinary conversation with regulators, business people in financial services, and consumer advocates working on problems of consumer financial decision-making.

Our goal is to stimulate cross-disciplinary conversation and improve basic research in the emerging area of consumer financial decision-making. This research can inform our understanding of how consumers actually make such decisions and how consumers can be helped to make better decisions by innovations in public policy, business, and consumer education. Please see the 2010 and 2011 programs on the conference website to see abstracts of research by scholars in economics, psychology, sociology, behavioral finance, consumer research, decision sciences, behavioral economics, and law. Our format allows a very high level of opportunity for conversation and interaction around the ideas presented.

Conference Format
We begin with a keynote session late Sunday afternoon: ten 75-minute sessions over the next two days. We begin with financial decision making of consumers in distress because of poor financial decision making or situational stress. We then turn our focus to more basic processes that guide everyday consumer financial decision making, both good and bad. Throughout the conference we schedule significant time for informal interaction outside of the sessions.

The conference co-chairs will select papers for presentation at the conference based on extended abstracts. Selected papers must not be published prior to the conference, but those researchers presenting their work at the conference must commit to have a paper that is complete and available for review by discussants one month prior to the conference. Selections will be based on quality, relevance to consumers’ financial decision-making, and contribution to breadth of and complementarity of topics and disciplinary approaches across the conference as a whole.

Registering for the Conference and Booking a Room
There are links on the conference website for booking at the St. Julien Hotel and for registering for the conference.
The conference will be held in the St. Julien Hotel & Spa. We have negotiated very attractive room rates for conference attendees (and families). Please note that the Conference has not guaranteed any rooms, rather they are on a “first come” basis. We encourage you to book your rooms as soon as you can. Boulder is a popular summer destination and rooms go quickly at the St. Julien Hotel!

JDMers please note that this year the Boulder Summer Conference immediately precedes the Behavioral Decision Research in Management conference, held later the same week at the St. Julien Hotel. Our hope is that many of you will attend both conferences.

ROBYN DAWES, A FOUNDER OF THE JUDGMENT AND DECISION-MAKING FIELD

December saw the passing of Robyn Dawes, without question a scholar who helped define the research area of Judgment and Decision Making. The author of the pre-eminent course text “Rational Choice in an Uncertain World”, Dawes was no doubt responsible for getting and keeping many students interested in the field. Dawes was an excellent writer. In addition to authoring what we think is the best-titled paper in the history of JDM “The Robust Beauty of Improper Linear Models in Decision Making“, his books were some of the few we read without skipping a word from start to finish. Dawes is unique: a mathematical clinical psychologist (some say the only one), a past-president of the JDM Society, a fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an academic with no fear of controversy, and much more.

Here we reprint an obituary from the CMU website entitled Robyn Dawes Transformed Psychological Sciences Helped Found the Behavioral Decision Research Field. Note that there is still time to make plans to attend a memorial service in January.

PITTSBURGH—Robyn Dawes, the Charles J. Queenan Jr. University Professor of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University who helped establish the field of behavioral decision research and made a significant impact in several areas of psychological sciences, died Dec. 14 at age 74.

“Robyn was an academic pioneer whose scholarship and leadership brought distinction to the university. His high standards and commitment to interdisciplinary teaching and research were deeply emblematic of Carnegie Mellon,” said CMU President Jared L. Cohon.

Dawes was one of the most distinguished researchers in behavioral science and significantly advanced the understanding of how people think, learn, judge and decide. Dawes was known for research in several areas, including characterizing the limits to judgment for experts and lay people, as well as the conditions that encourage people to cooperate with one another. He also became well known as a critic of clinical psychology practices not supported by empirical research.

“Robyn was a giant in the field of psychology, constantly pushing the boundaries and taking a fresh, innovative approach to real problems,” said John Lehoczky, dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. “He helped create the area of behavioral decision research — an intellectual field that merged psychology and economic theory and that has since given us behavioral economics. His contributions to his research, Carnegie Mellon and his students are impossible to measure. His legacy will live on through the Department of Social and Decision Sciences, which he built.”

Dawes received his bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Harvard University in 1958. After taking a class in experimental psychodynamics, Dawes became interested in psychological problems from an empirical perspective. He attended the University of Michigan for his post-graduate work, earning a master’s degree in clinical psychology in 1960 and a doctorate in mathematical psychology in 1963. His first faculty appointment was at the University of Oregon, where he taught psychology and served as department head.

In 1985, Dawes joined the Carnegie Mellon faculty as a professor of psychology and head of the Department of Social Sciences. He embarked on establishing a core in decision-making, a discipline that his own research had helped to define.

“Robyn actually put the ‘decision’ into Carnegie Mellon’s Social and Decision Sciences Department, and his leadership and research set the stage for us becoming a world-class presence in this area,” said John H. Miller, head of the Department of Social and Decision Sciences. “His research gracefully transcended the social sciences, having major impacts on the fields of economics, political science and psychology.”

Dawes work in debunking myths and the views of self-proclaimed experts was based in the concern for humanity that motivated his research.  As a member of the National Research Council’s Committee on AIDS Research in the 1990s, Dawes fought the unfounded misconception that needle exchange programs — which can reduce the spread of HIV among intravenous drug users — promote drug abuse. In his book “House of Cards: Psychology and Psychotherapy Built on Myth,” Dawes called out mental health professionals for ignoring empirical research in favor of techniques that do not hold up to scientific inquiry.

Baruch Fischhoff, the Howard Heinz University Professor of Social and Decision Sciences and Engineering and Public Policy, was influenced by Dawes’ work when he was a graduate student in the early 1970s. Fischhoff later became Dawes’ colleague at Decision Research, in Eugene, Ore., and then at Carnegie Mellon. “Robyn was a great man, scientist and intellectual, who devoted his career to creating a psychology that makes the world a better place,” he said. “He was fearless in seeking the truth and in fighting those who would subvert it. He was a hero to those with the good fortune to know him.”

Dawes authored several books including “Mathematical Psychology: An Elementary Introduction,” one of the first text books on the topic, “The Fundamentals of Attitude Measurement” and “Everyday Irrationality: How Pseudoscientists, Lunatics and the Rest of Us Fail to Think Rationally.”

During the course of his career, Dawes earned many honors including the American Psychological Association’s William James Award in 1990 for his book “Rational Choice in an Uncertain World,” an induction into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002 and an elected fellowship to the American Statistical Association in 2006. In 2005, the American Psychological Society honored his lifetime of scientific contributions with a Festschrift, a collection of essays about his work written by colleagues from around the country.

Dawes is survived by his wife Mary Schafer; his two daughters, Jennifer Dawes of Pittsburgh, Pa., and Molly Meyers of Eugene, Ore.; two grandchildren, Kaylynn Meyers and Avery Meyers; and two cousins, Marcia Meadows of Mesa, Ariz., and Jane Hill of Eureka, Calif.

A memorial service is planned for Jan. 29, 2011, at the First Unitarian Church in Pittsburgh. Contributions may be made in Dawes’ memory to Transitional Services, Inc., 806 West St., Homestead, PA 15120.

For more information on the acclaimed career of Robyn Dawes, watch an interview with him that was made in conjunction with his Festschrift at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1321077408096928789#.

Photo credit: http://bit.ly/gxhloA

TYPES OF DEFAULTS AND HOW TO SET THEM

Defaults are settings or choices that apply to individuals who do not take active steps to change them (Brown & Krishna, 2004). Collections of default settings, or “default configurations” determine the way products, services, or policies are initially encountered by consumers, while “reuse defaults” come into play with subsequent uses of a product. At the finest level, a single question can have “choice option default”, which on electronic forms can take the shape of a pre-checked box (Johnson, Bellman, and Lohse, 2002).

Defaults have been shown to have strong effects on real-world choices in domains including investment (Cronqvist & Thaler, 2004; Madrian & Shea, 2001), insurance (Johnson et al, 2003), organ donation (Johnson & Goldstein, 2004), marketing (Goldstein et al, 2008) and beyond.

They have a wide appeal among marketers and policy makers in that they guide choice while at the same time preserving freedom to choose. They are often regarded as the prototypical instruments of libertarian paternalism (Sunstein & Thaler, 2003).

Through default-setting policies, choice architects exhibit influence over resulting choices. The palette of policies includes simple defaults (choosing one default for all audiences), random defaults (assigning a configuration at random, for instance, as an experiment), forced choice (withholding the product or service by default, and releasing it only after an active choice is made), and sensory defaults (those that change according to what can be inferred about the user, for example, web sites that change language based on the visitor’s IP address).

Products and services that are re-used can also avail themselves of persistent or reverting defaults (which, respectively, remember or forget the last changes made to the default configuration) and predictive defaults (which intelligently alter reuse defaults based on observation of the user).

Those setting defaults should be aware of the ethical risks involved (Smith, Goldstein & Johnson, 2010). The ethical acceptability of using a default to guide choice has much to do with the reason why the default has an effect in the first place. When consumers are aware that defaults may be recommendations in some cases and manipulation attempts in other cases (Brown & Krishna), they exhibit a level of “marketplace metacognition” that suggests they retain autonomy and freedom of choice. However, if defaults are effective because consumers are not aware that they have choices, or because the transaction costs of changing from the default are too high, defaults impinge upon consumer autonomy. An often prudent policy, though not a cure-all, is to set the default to the alternative most people prefer when making an active choice, without time pressure, in the absence of any default. Running an experiment on a sample of the greater population can determine these preferences, and can be done in little time and at a low cost in the age of Internet experimentation (Gosling & Johnson, 2010).

REFERENCES

Brown, Christina L. and Aradhna Krishna (2004), “The Skeptical Shopper: A Metacognitive Account for the Effects of Default Options on Choice,” Journal of Consumer Research, 31 (3), 529-539.
Cronqvist, Henrik and Richard H. Thaler (2004), “Design Choices in Privatized Social Security Systems: Learning from the Swedish Experience,” American Economic Review, 94 (2), 424-428.
Goldstein, Daniel G., Eric J. Johnson, Andreas Herrman, and Mark Heitmann (2008), “Nudge Your Customers Toward Better Choices,” Harvard Business Review, December, 99-105.
Gosling, Samuel D. and John A. Johnson (2010), Advanced methods for conducting online behavioral research. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Johnson, Eric J., Steven Bellman, and Gerald L. Lohse (2002), “Defaults, Framing, and Privacy: Why Opting In Is Not Equal To Opting Out,” Marketing Letters, 13 (1), 5–15.
Johnson, Eric J. and Daniel G. Goldstein (2003), “Do Defaults Save Lives?” Science, 302, 1338-1339.
Johnson, Eric J., John Hershey, Jacqueline Meszaros, and Howard Kunreuther (1993), “Framing, Probability Distortions, and Insurance Decisions,” Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 7, 35-53.
Madrian, Brigitte C. and Dennis F. Shea, D. F. (2001), “The Power of Suggestion: Inertia in 401(k) Participation and Savings Behavior,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116 (4), 1149-1187.
Thaler, Richard, Daniel Kahneman and Jack L. Knetsch (1992), “The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion and Status Quo Bias,” in Richard Thaler, The Winner’s Curse, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 63-78.
Samuelson, William and Richard Zeckhauser (1988), “Status Quo Bias in Decision Making,” Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 1 (1), 7-59.
Smith, N. Craig, Daniel G. Goldstein, and Eric J. Johnson (2010). Choice without Awareness: Ethical and Policy Implications of Defaults. Working paper.
Sunstein, Cass R. and Richard H. Thaler (2003), “Libertarian Paternalism Is Not an Oxymoron,” The University of Chicago Law Review, 70 (4), 1159-1202.

EVALUATING THE CREDIBILITY OF ENDORSERS AND DOUBTERS OF CLIMATE CHANGE

In science, you are not supposed to believe something simply because other people believe it, even if those other people are really smart. Like the Hollywood narrator, we can think of examples where “one man (1), in a world of doubters, stands up for what he knows to be true”. Galileo was sent before the Roman Inquisition for his views, and mainstream physicists rejected Einstein’s theory of relativity; one Nobel Laureate referred to it as “a Jewish fraud” (2). Thank goodness they didn’t let the prevailing views keep them from publishing what they found.

However, despite what makes a good Hollywood story, the inconvenient truth is that if you think one thing and a lot of smarter and more knowledgeable people think you are wrong, you probably are wrong.

Sure, there’s Galileo, Einstein, the Asch experiments and Tetlock’s book, but where would we be if we didn’t take the word of those with intelligence and experience?

Really stupid, that’s where.

At a certain level of acceptance, a reasonable person will accept something as true enough to believe in and get on with life. We can’t re-run every experiment in the history of science. The good news is that due to homo sapiens’ brilliant capacity to accept some counter-intuitive matters on faith, we gullibly accept fanciful notions like atoms, viruses, and Greenland to make good decisions about chemical engineering, disease prevention, and navigation.

Even rationality, which people in the decision sciences care so deeply about, originated in the Enlightenment as a description of what smart people (les hommes éclairés) (3) believe. Rationality theory at its birth was just a theory of the cognitive psychology of smart people. As the beliefs of smart people changed over time, rationality theory bent in subservience (4).

So, here’s the question of the day. If you are a scientist, what should you believe about your beliefs when they contradict the beliefs of a lot of smart people?

Story time. In graduate school, your Decision Science News editor was chatting with his statistics professor, Steven Stigler (5). The topic was the limited usefulness of p-values. Scientists seem to wish that p-values referred to the probability that a hypothesis is true (and some actually and wrongly believe this, see 6). However, they actually reflect the probability of the data given that the null hypothesis is true. A young Decision Science News remarked that this probability isn’t all that interesting.

“Well”, Stigler said, “When the p-value is very small, it’s either the case that the null hypothesis is false, or that something extraordinary has happened. Both of those seem pretty interesting.”

End of story. Time to link story to the “one man against the world” scenario.

One man believes “not X”, the scientific world believes “X”. We the bystanders want to know the probability that either is right. But we can’t know that. Furthermore, we are not experts in every scientific discipline, and do not have time to become experts.

What we bystanders probably do is run intuitive statistics on the distribution of expert opinions. We guesstimate the probability that we’d observe the data we do (all these smart and knowledgeable standing behind “X”) given that “not X” were true. We estimate this to be a small probability. After all, the smart and knowledgeable people who become scientists are a skeptical bunch. They’re doubters by default and they all want to be Galileos who get immortalized for standing apart from the pack and being proven right. Getting the vast majority of scientists to agree on anything is a feat. We consider this small probability of expert consensus and say “either ‘one man’ is wrong or something extraordinary has happened”. We typically decide that ‘one man’ is wrong, and lo and behold, we’re usually right (7).

Ach, but it gets tricky. Opinions are not i.i.d. Some view overwhelming agreement as less convincing than a bit of disagreement. (Apparently it is written in Maimonides Law of the Sanhedrin (8) “If a Sanhedrin (i.e., a bunch of judges) opens a capital case with a unanimous guilty verdict, he is exempt, until some merit is found to acquit him.” That is, if you’re facing the death penalty and all the judges vote against you, it actually prevents you from being executed. Perhaps the idea is such unanimity is unlikely if the defendant had received a proper defense.)

All of this leads up to this week’s article from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:

Expert credibility in climate change [PDF]

Although preliminary estimates from published literature and expert surveys suggest striking agreement among climate scientists on the tenets of anthropogenic climate change (ACC), the American public expresses substantial doubt about both the anthropogenic cause and the level of scientific agreement underpinning ACC. A broad analysis of the climate scientist community itself, the distribution of credibility of dissenting researchers relative to agreeing researchers, and the level of agreement among top climate experts has not been conducted and would inform future ACC discussions. Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.

The authors claim that not only do most (97-98%) expert climate scientists believe in climate change, but that the small minority who doubt it are of lesser prominence and lower expertise. Publication and citation data are provided to make the argument. The Yahoo Research lunch crowd, all of whom are incredibly smart and all of whom believe in climate change, found the paper to be “awesome” and “hilarious”, but “incredibly fishy”. Sounds like good criteria for inclusion in Decision Science News.

What do you think? [PDF]

NOTES
1) Sorry to the women, but that’s what they say.
2) Einstein: Holton, Gerald (2008). Who was Einstein? Why is he still so alive? In Galison, Peter L., Gerald Holton & Silvan S. Schweber (Eds) “Einstein for the 21st Century: His Legacy in Science, Art, and Modern Culture”. Also, as a Jew I take offense at the Nazi presumption that the Jews couldn’t come up with a better fraud than the theory of relativity.
3) Pardonnez moi, les femmes, main ce qu’on dit.
4) Daston, Lorraine. (1988). Classical Probability in the Enlightenment. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
5) As a graduate student, your Editor become very fond of Statistics and took so many graduate courses, he fulfilled the requirements for a Master’s degree. However, the University of Chicago had a rule that grad student scholarships covered only one Master’s degree and your Editor had already received one in Psychology. Since the costs had already been incurred, your Editor asked if he could give back the Master’s in Psych. The University was not amused.
6) Oakes, M. (1986). Statistical inference: A commentary for the social and behavioral sciences. Chichester, UK: Wiley.
7) Then we die. Sometimes we’re proven wrong after death, but as long as we were correct while alive it’s no grave concern.
8) Chapter 9

FINDINGS PAPERS AND CONCEPTUAL CONTRIBUTIONS WELCOMED

This week, we post an editorial from the Journal of Consumer Research, an “A” Marketing journal that publishes quite a bit of quality judgment and decision-making research. JCR is now welcoming shorter findings papers and longer conceptual papers. In the past, some folks felt that JCR was leaning too heavily towards multi-experiment empirical papers. And if you’re a psychologist thinking that “multi-experiment” means 3 studies of 26 participants each, hold onto your hat because it wasn’t unusual to see JCR papers with 5 studies of 100 participants each.  (DSN hasn’t fact checked this, but it does vaguely remember an ACR Conference luncheon address in which the speaker had calculated one need to run something like 800 participants (including pilot studies and studies eventually dropped for length concerns) to get a paper in ACR). The distribution of article types should be changing now, for the better.

Does anyone remember what that number was? We think is was 800 or 900. Also, does anyone have an idea why psychology done in a marketing journal involves so many more participants per condition than psychology done in a psychology journal?

Journal of Consumer Research
Editorial

Broadening the Scope of Consumer Research

In analyzing the types of submissions we receive, it is clear that the majority fall into one of two bins. The first category of papers consists of psychological pieces that offer theoretical advances with empirical support. These papers sometimes propose a new phenomenon and the process by which it occurs or they dig deeper into the process underlying an established phenomenon. They provide evidence for the relation between putative causes and observed effects (the theorized process) by testing for mediation, moderation, and boundary conditions. Such papers commonly present several experiments to provide evidence for the underlying process and to rule out alternative process accounts. For example, as a consequence of this detail, the average number of studies reported in JCR papers in the last year is 3.5. The second category of papers consists of qualitative research, much of it conducted within the consumer culture theory paradigm. These papers put the disembodied heads of consumers, which is the focus of the psychological studies, back on their bodies, situate them in a culture and moment and so provide a rich contextual understanding of consumer behavior. Despite some chafing, these fields work as a team to advance the study of consumer behavior, coming at our understanding from high to low, from big picture to thin slices. Missing from these sets are at least two types of papers that we would be pleased to receive, and that we highlight in this essay. The first set is findings papers (heavy on effects, light on theory). The second is conceptual contributions (heavy on idea, light on data). Both types of papers are important means by which a field moves forward and are highly appropriate for JCR. Each has distinctive criteria by which their contribution is evaluated. We briefly discuss these criteria below.

Findings papers are distinct from the more common articles because their contribution would be judged on the nature of the effect, not the establishment of the underlying process. Only a small number of papers would make the grade in this category as the effect would have to be new, important, and provocative. Such novel effects would not be common but when they are found, we want to know about them right away. The findings would be interesting because they run counter to established theory, conventional wisdom, or lay beliefs (Van Den Bergh, Dewitte, and Warlop 2008; Brendl, Markman, and Messner 2003), open new avenues of study about important areas of consumer research that the field has not yet pioneered (Peck and Childers 2003), or suggest ways in which consumers are made better or worse off because of surprising ways in which they think or behave (Hsee, Yu, Zhang, and Zhang 2003). The goal in these papers is to establish the effect credibly, to ensure it is not some better known effect in superficially unfamiliar guise, and, if possible to point the field in direction for future study by highlighting moderators or boundary conditions or by suggesting the general direction of underlying process. However, these papers would not be required to nail down the underlying process, although some of the papers cited as examples above do go a long way in this regard. Authors might not yet know what is producing a new effect. Holding up publication of the phenomenon while the authors try to figure it out fails to utilize the talents of the field. By publishing the effect, the authors turn it over to the community with its portfolio of skills for further exploration. In other words, send us your “cool ideas,” in appropriately short, to-the-point papers, quite possibly with a single study. Our reviewers are skilled in judging both quality of the effect and the establishment of process and they can advise the editors of the contribution on each path. While our reviewers might commonly emphasize process evidence, particularly for longer papers that are intended to explore underlying mechanisms, these reviewers have the ability and our editorial encouragement to judge contribution considering effects alone. Our turnaround time is fast and the editors are supportive. We want to see this work.

Conceptual contributions are also distinct from the more common articles because their contribution would be judged on making breakthrough ideas or providing new ways of thinking about an important aspect of consumer behavior. Only a small number of these papers would make the grade here as well because the idea would need to be breakthrough, interesting, theoretically grounded, clarifying, and generative (capable of stimulating research). Whereas we anticipate that “effect” type papers might be shorter than the typical JCR paper, conceptual contributions may be longer than the traditional paper since they reflect “big” ideas that may take considerable space to articulate. Two categories of these articles are called “new perspectives” and “integrative frameworks.”

New perspectives introduce a new construct, theory, or domain that is important but has not been considered in our field despite its clear potential for generating new insights. In some cases these articles are particularly important because they illuminate an idea that rings true even though it may run counter to a prevailing paradigm, world view, or metaphorical lens for viewing consumer behavior. Such is true with Holbrook and Hirschman’s (1982) paper on experiential consumption. In other cases, they make us consider ideas that have been considered elsewhere (gift-giving, Sherry 1983; family identity, Epp and Price 2008; sharing, Belk 2010) but which have not been considered in our field, despite their clear potential for adding insight. These papers would not merely introduce an idea that has been studied elsewhere. Instead, they would show how our understanding of consumers and consumer behavior may be enhanced or changed by its study. The goal of both sets of papers is to introduce the new idea, show why it is important, articulate how it differs from the prevailing idea or what gaps it fills, and show what new ideas its study can bring about. Often, these papers provide organizing frameworks, visual devices or comparative charts that visually depict the idea and what new things it might explain. They may offer suggestions on how to study this construct, theory or domain, and/or develop explicit hypotheses which can be tested in future research (Alba and Hutchinson 1987).

A second category of conceptual contribution is the integrative framework. These articles organize a large body of consumer research studies (and perhaps studies from adjacent fields as well) into a new perspective. Papers that make the grade here do not merely review or summarize what is known about a construct, theory, or domain. They develop an elegant higher order parsimonious perspective that both accommodates past findings and accounts for anomalous ones. Such is true with Petty and Cacioppo’s (1986) Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion, Cohen and Reed’s (2006) Multiple Pathway Anchoring and Adjustment model of attitude generation and recruitment, or Bettman, Luce, and Payne’s (1998) model of constructive choice. Novelty here comes from organizing existing findings into a powerful yet simplified view that adds clarity and reduces complexity. Novelty also comes from articulating new ideas that derive from the framework that other researchers can test empirically. Here too, we would not hold authors responsible for testing new ideas from their integrative perspective. Instead, we would expect that these ideas would be followed up by other researchers.

In sum, we are delighted with the quality of submissions to the journal but we encourage authors presently working on or contemplating effects articles or conceptual pieces to consider the Journal of Consumer Research a welcoming outlet for their contributions.

John Deighton, Editor-in-Chief
Debbie MacInnis, Editor
Ann McGill, Editor
Baba Shiv, Editor

DECISION RESEARCH JOBS, SEPTEMBER 2009

Research Associate for Empirical Research on the Neurobiology of Decision-Making: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Behavioral Experiments

Requirements
Demonstrated skills and experience in behavioral neuroscience research and in programming (Matlab and Eprime). Demonstrated ability to do work independently and having the necessary social skills and positive attitude to interact with test persons. Either a Master or PhD in psychology, neurobiology, cognitive science or a related field (possibly also in computer science, but with an interest in behavioral decision-making and cognitive neuroscience). Demonstrated relevant abilities are more emphasized than the specific degrees or work experience.

Job Duties
Insead is a leading business school with campuses in France and Singapore and a center in Abu Dhabi. This is an opportunity for a candidate post-master level with a background in behavioral neuroscience/ neuro-psychology / BDM with knowledge in neuroscience to conduct rigorous applied research on economic decision-making with a particular focus on food consumption. The research associate will work for faculty from the Marketing area at INSEAD and Neuroscientists from Aix-Marseille Université and from the Department des Etudes Cognitive of the Ecole Normale Supérieure. The researcher is expected to program experiments in Eprime, recruit subjects and assist fMRI data and behavioral data collection as well as doing simple data analysis steps using software like SPM, Matlab and Stata or R. She/he is required to speak English and French fluently. The position is for 12 months on a part time basis (~2 days a week). Application deadline is 30.09.2009 and start date is Nov 2009.

Campus: Europe/Fontainebleau. Status: Cadre. Contact person: Veronique Pereira. Contact email: cvbox@insead.edu

Hilke Plassmann, PhD
Assistant Professor of Marketing
INSEAD, Boulevard de Constance

77300 Fontainebleau, France
tel. +33 (0) 160724313
fax. 33 (0) 160729240
e-mail: hilke.plassmann@insead.edu

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BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS/NEUROECONOMICS MULTI-DEPARTMENT SEARCH

The University of Southern California, College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, invites applicants for a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor in behavioral economics / neuroeconomics, broadly defined. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, neurocomputational models of learning, neuroscience of decision-making, affective neuroscience, behavioral and experimental game theory and economics studies of bounded rationality. Eventual appointment will be in either Psychology, Economics, or Neurobiology.

USC offers many opportunities for collaboration across these and other units of the university. Resources include the Dana and David Dornsife Cognitive Neuroscience Imaging Center, the Brain and Creativity Institute, the Institute for Economic Policy Research, and a broad interdisciplinary Economics and Neuroscience community composed of more than 70 faculty members in the basic, engineering, and clinical sciences. USC strongly values diversity and is committed to equal opportunity in employment. Women and men, and members of all racial and ethnic groups, are encouraged to apply.

Applications received before November 1 2009 will be given preferential review; interviews will begin shortly thereafter. Candidates must have a PhD or equivalent doctoral degree at the time of the appointment. Please send representative reprints/preprints and a curriculum vita electronically to multisearch@college.usc.edu. A minimum of three letters of reference should be sent by email to the same address or by post to USC College Search, ATTN: Ann Langerud, Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-106

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Florence Levy Kay Fellowship IN psychology and BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS*

Brandeis University invites applications for a two-year, non-renewable Florence Levy Kay Postdoctoral Fellowship for teaching and research at the intersection of Psychology and Economics, beginning Fall 2010. This interdisciplinary joint appointment will be in the Departments of Psychology and Economics with the possibility of linkages with programs such as Neuroscience. The Fellow, who will be appointed as a faculty member at the rank of lecturer, will teach one course per semester, covering topics such as attitude formation and change, co-operation and competition, prosocial behavior, decision-making, game theory, behavioral economics, neuroeconomics, and distributive justice. The Fellow will also actively pursue his or her own research interests with the support of an $8000 research fund.

We are particularly interested in candidates with expertise in any of the following fields as applied to the interface of psychology and economics: (i) motivated and emotion-guided choice, (ii) decision-making under uncertainty, (iii) valuation or utility; (iv) fairness, trust, and reciprocity; [v] empathy, sharing, and co-operation; (v) subliminal persuasion; (vi) individual or cultural differences; [vii] learning and emotion. Potential topics for study include the attentional, cognitive, and physiological (including neuroendocrine, hemodynamic, and neurophysiological) correlates of the phenomena listed above. Opportunities are available for collaboration in research labs involving cross-cultural issues, lifespan development and aging, electrophysiology, neuroimaging, and neuroendocrine assessments, and eye-tracking.

The Ph.D. must be in hand by September 2010. The salary for the first year is $53,732, plus university employee benefits and up to $1500 in moving expenses. Send letter of interest, CV, brief description of research, copies of relevant publications, teaching evaluations, and three letters of recommendation to Kay Fellowship Search Committee,

Department of Psychology MS 062, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 02454-9110. First consideration will be given to candidates whose complete applications are received by January 15, 2010, but we will accept applications until the position is filled.

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The Marketing department of the Rotterdam School of Management (RSM), Erasmus University, the Netherlands seeks a postdoc for a 3-year project on ‘Emotions and (Financial) Decision Making’, starting asap.

You will work as a team member of xDELIA, a recently funded FP-7 EU research consortium whose aim is to study the role of emotions and expertise in financial decision making. xDELIA, which stands for “Excellence in Decision-making through Enhanced Learning in Immersive Applications”, is investigating the role of behavioral biases and emotions in professional financial trading, private investment, and personal finance (i.e. the financial capability of the general public). An important goal of the xDELIA project is to develop sensor and serious game technologies to support non-formal learning in building financial competence and expertise. A key task of the postdoc is to contribute to the theoretical underpinnings of the xDELIA project, utilizing his/her expertise into the psychology of decision making, emotions and emotion regulation. The empirical research will consist of conducting experimental research (in the lab and in situ), testing for example the effect of biofeedback (physiological measures of affect) on decision making, and publishing these results in top academic outlets. Conducting online panel surveys or online field experiments into personal finance decisions is also expected to be part of the project.

Within RSM, you will be a member of the Marketing department , well-known for its expertise on consumer behavior and behavioral decision making and you will have the opportunity to collaborate with neuroscientists at the Erasmus Center for Neuroeconomics . In your research you will have access to the excellent lab facilities at the Erasmus Behavioural Lab . We are looking for an experimentally trained (social) psychologist, consumer behavior researcher or cognitive scientist with an interest in financial decision making (relevant PhD or expected to hold one shortly).

Information and application
For more information on the job, our requirements and our offer, see the full description here. Your application consisting of a letter of motivation, your CV and preferably two letters of reference can by sent by email to asmidts@rsm.nl.

Professor Ale Smidts
Professor of Marketing Research
Dean of Research
Rotterdam School of Management
Erasmus University Rotterdam

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THE DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL AND DECISION SCIENCES AT CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY seeks candidates to fill a junior-level tenure-track position in behavioral decision research and policy.

Candidates should have a strong commitment to applying behavioral decision research to public policy and to creating the basic research foundations for such applications. They should have a background in both normative/analytical and behavioral decision research, with a strong research program in at least one. Although their application interests could be in any policy area, the department has strengths in environment, energy, health and safety, finance, national security, and risk. Teaching would support the department’s graduate and undergraduate programs.

The department is interdisciplinary, with faculty members from psychology, economics, political science, decision science, and history. Several have joint appointments in other departments, notably Engineering and Public Policy. Collaboration is a hallmark of the Department and University.

http://www.hss.cmu.edu/departments/sds/

Applicants should send a CV, two papers, three letters of recommendation, and a statement of research interests to: Chair, Behavioral Decision Research and Policy Search Committee Carnegie Mellon University Department of Social and Decision Sciences Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890. Please submit applications by October 15.

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The Chair of Decision Theory and Behavioral Game Theory at the ETH Zurich has multiple openings for Ph.D. candidates and Postdocs.

Potential candidates should be interested in studying human decision making and have interests and training in some of the following areas: experimental research methods in human decision making, decision theory, cognitive psychology, experimental economics, behavioral game theory, statistics and mathematical modeling.

Our team’s research focuses on individual decision making under risk and uncertainty and behavioral game theory. We are an interdisciplinary group, bringing together methods from experimental economics, cognitive psychology, and mathematical modeling to gain insights into how humans make decisions. In one line of research we study the dynamics of trust based cooperation among interdependent decision makers. This work examines various mechanisms that stave off the unraveling of trust and facilitate cooperation between interacting decision agents. In another line of work, we study how decision makers adapt and make trade-offs when making sequential choices among alternatives in a risky and dynamic environment.

Please apply online and submit your documents such as a copy of your curriculum vitae, a cover letter and copies of all relevant certificates/grades. Applications will be reviewed starting October 1, 2009 and on an ongoing basis until the positions are filled.

Online application:

Email any questions regarding the openings to: secretary@dbgt.gess.ethz.ch

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Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy University of Virginia Open Rank Search in Leadership and Public Policy

The Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia seeks applications for an open rank, tenure track position in leadership and public policy to begin in August 2010. Candidates must have an earned doctorate in political science, psychology, sociology or related field; must be willing to teach applied core courses on leadership skills for professional and master’s students in public policy; and must show a record or the promise of scholarly productivity and publications in high-quality academic venues. Candidates must have their Ph.D. in hand at time of appointment. Areas of potential research interest include but are not limited to: leadership as it relates to organizational behavior, judgment and decision-making, communication and persuasion, motivation, negotiation and conflict resolution, cross-cultural understanding, and crisis management. A joint appointment in an appropriate social science department in the College of Arts and Sciences is possible.

One of the newest public policy schools in the nation, the Batten School currently offers a five-year bachelors/ MPP program that graduated its first class last May. In the future, the School will offer a two-year MPP degree program as well as programs for undergraduates. The School aspires to become one of the nation’s top public affairs schools with distinctive commitments to leadership as a key skill required for success in public policy, the application of innovative research to effective problem solving, the integration of domestic and international policy in an increasingly globalized world, and is made possible by a $100 million endowment gift from retired media executive Frank Batten, Sr. Harry Harding was appointed founding dean July 1, 2009.

To apply, visit: https://jobs.virginia.edu and search on Posting Number 0604309. Complete a Candidate Profile and attach a cover letter outlining research and teaching interests in leadership and public policy and a curriculum vitae. Please submit samples of written work to: Chair, Leadership Faculty Search Committee, University of Virginia, Varsity Hall,
136 Hospital Drive, P.O. Box 400893, Charlottesville, Virginia 22904-4893.
In addition, please have three recommenders submit letters to the above address. Review of applications by the committee will begin October 1, 2009; however, the position will remain open to applications until filled.

The University of Virginia welcomes applications from women and members of underrepresented groups, seeks to build a culturally diverse intellectual environment and is committed to a policy of equal employment opportunity and to the principles of affirmative action in accordance with state and federal laws.
https://jobs.virginia.edu/applicants/jsp/shared/frameset/Frameset.jsp?time=1252438800033

TIMELY, LIVELY, AND CREATIVE

Decision Science News just received the new copy of Marketing Science in the mail and must confess, it is great.

Where to start:

• Timely: It kicks off with an editorial that connects the science of marketing to the financial crisis, addressing a topic that is on the mind of many readers. This really makes a difference, especially when one considers that the studies published in most journal articles are several years old.
• Lively: The lead article “Website Morphing” by Hauser, Urban, Liberali, & Braun is followed up by three commentaries and a rejoinder by the author. Discussion! Debate!
• Relevant: The commentaries are short and written by very bright people (Hal Varian of Google; John Gittins – Oxford statistican whose theory figures in the main article; and Andrew Gelman of Columbia). This helps elevate the Return On Sentences Read (ROSR for you metrics fans).
• Concise: In the Internet age, there’s no reason to have mammoth journal articles. Put the important stuff in the journal and the rest can reside in an arbitrarily-long online appendix. Marketing Science articles are short, leaving room for many articles, which increases the chances that something will appeal to you (common sense in the print media industry, but journals I read started to wake up to it around 2005).
• Creative: In this website’s opinion, there are too many articles that basically say “We’re going to identify a moderating condition of a theory (of any field other than marketing) through some clever experiments that use household products as stimuli. The climax will be a splendid crossover interaction”. Two kinds of papers I’d like to see more of are 1) “Here’s an important problem to which we offer a solution” and 2) “Here’s a new capability, which might just be able do X, which could really change the world. Let’s see if it is true.” These latter papers are creative. They lead to discoveries, things like conjoint analysis, radar, and the ability to search all the world’s online information in less than a second. Marketing Science is full of such papers, as is clear from their titles “Website Morphing”, “Limited Edition Products: When and When Not To Offer Them”, “Zooming In: Self-Emergence of Movements in New Product Growth”. If applied, exploratory, and discovery-oriented research is supposed to be bad, then Decision Science News doesn’t want to be good.

All of this gives DSN quant envy. Time to brush up on those differential equations ….

HOW WE THINK ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL DECISIONS

Decision Science researchers Elke Weber and Dave Krantz of Columbia University feature prominently in the recent New York Times article Why Isn’t The Brain Green?.

Excerpt:

Over the past few decades a great deal of research has addressed how we make decisions in financial settings or when confronted with choices having to do with health care and consumer products. A few years ago, a Columbia psychology professor named David H. Krantz teamed up with Elke Weber — who holds a chair at Columbia’s business school as well as an appointment in the school’s psychology department — to assemble an interdisciplinary group of economists, psychologists and anthropologists from around the world who would examine decision-making related to environmental issues. Aided by a $6 million grant from the National Science Foundation, CRED has the primary objective of studying how perceptions of risk and uncertainty shape our responses to climate change and other weather phenomena like hurricanes and droughts. The goal, in other words, isn’t so much to explore theories about how people relate to nature, which has been a longtime pursuit of some environmental psychologists and even academics like the Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson. Rather, it is to finance laboratory and field experiments in North America, South America, Europe and Africa and then place the findings within an environmental context.

The article features other decision researchers as well, including Baruch Fischhoff, Thaler, Sunstein, Michel Handgraaf, and Dave Hardisty. DSN would like to point out that whether or not the brain is green, the brain is responsible for green.

POSTDOCTORAL OPPORTUNITIES IN BERLIN, BOULDER, AND NYC

If you are like most Decision Science News readers, you have a PhD or are fast on your way to earning one. It only follows that if you are like most Decision Science News readers, you are eligible to apply for a postdoc. Here are a few it’s still not too late to apply for, even on the last day of 2008.

Here’s one in Berlin:

Postdoctoral Fellowships and Visiting Graduate Fellowships in Cognition And Decision Making

The Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, under the direction of Gerd Gigerenzer, is seeking applicants for up to 3 two-year Postdoctoral Fellowships (with the possibility of third year) and up to 2 one-year Visiting Graduate Fellowships beginning on or after September 1, 2009, but earlier or later start dates are possible. The Visiting Graduate Fellowships are intended for students currently enrolled in graduate programs.

Candidates should be interested in studying the cognitive mechanisms underlying bounded, social, and ecological rationality in real-world domains. Current and past researchers in our group have had training in psychology, cognitive science, economics, mathematics, biology, and computer science to name but a few. The Center provides excellent resources, including support staff and equipment for conducting experiments and computer simulations, generous travel support for conferences, and, most importantly, the time to think.

For more information about our group and other funding possibilities for graduate students please visit our homepage at www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/en/forschung/abc/ . The working language of the center is English, and knowledge of German is not necessary for living in Berlin and enjoying the active life and cultural riches of this city. We strongly encourage applications from women, and members of minority groups. The Max Planck Society is committed to employing more disabled individuals and especially encourages them to apply.

Please submit applications (consisting of a cover letter describing research interests, curriculum vitae, up to five reprints, and 3 letters of recommendation) by January 10th, 2009 to ensure consideration. However, applications will be accepted until the positions are filled. The preferred method of submission is a single PDF file for the cover letter and CV, plus PDF copies of the reprints e-mailed to fellowships2009(at)mpib-berlin.mpg.de. Letters of recommendation and questions can be emailed to the same address. Under exceptional circumstances applications can be mailed to Ms. Wiebke Moeller, Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Lentzeallee 94, 14195 Berlin, Germany.

Here’s one at Colorado

University of Colorado
Leeds School of Business and Department of Psychology
Research Associate

The University of Colorado at Boulder anticipates hiring a research associate in a new interdisciplinary Center for Research on Consumer Financial Decision Making. Basic research in judgment and decision making, psychology, consumer research, and behavioral economics can inform our understanding of financial decisions such as choosing a mortgage, saving for retirement, decumulating savings, using credit cards, and paying for health care. The Center will conduct basic research and more applied work to inform public policy.

The research associate position would be for two-years, with a start date of August 1, 2009. The associate will conduct research with Professor John Lynch in the Leeds School of Business and Professor Leaf Van Boven in the Department of Psychology at the University of Colorado. Van Boven is co-Director of the Judgment, Emotion, Decision, and Intuition (JEDI) lab and Director of the Center for Research on Judgment and Policy. Lynch (coming to CU from Duke University) studies consumer decision-making. Please see these websites for descriptions of their ongoing research programs:

http://psych.colorado.edu/~vanboven/VanBoven/Home.html

http://faculty.fuqua.duke.edu/%7Ejglynch/bio/articles.htm

The ideal candidate would be an accomplished psychology PhD who has demonstrated research and teaching abilities and who is interested in seeking a faculty position in consumer research and marketing. Many leading Marketing departments hire researchers with Psychology PhDs whose work has implications for consumer behavior. They seek scholars who can publish in the top journals both in marketing / consumer research and allied basic disciplines such as social psychology, cognitive psychology, and judgment and decision making. Marketing departments also require that these scholars demonstrate that they can teach effectively in a business school setting.

This position is designed to help the scholar achieve these interdisciplinary goals. In conjunction with this research associate appointment, the appointee will also hold a 10% instructor appointment and will be expected to teach one undergraduate course per year in the Leeds School of Business under John Lynch’s supervision. The research associate will work in labs in both psychology and business; collaborate on research aimed at journals in both psychology and consumer research.

This position is open to candidates with behavioral research experience, data analysis and modeling skills, and training in judgment and decision making, social psychology, cognitive psychology, or a related discipline, who have recently earned a PhD or who are expecting their doctorate in by July 2009, on a topic relevant to the research programs of Lynch and Van Boven and to issues in financial decision making, broadly defined. Salary is competitive.

Applications (cover letter, vita, two letters of recommendation, pdfs of three research papers) should be submitted on line to https://www.jobsatcu.com/. Click on Search Postings and enter the job posting number 806125. In your cover letter, please describe your research expertise, data analysis skills, and computer skills.

Penultimately, Columbia

Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, Columbia University Post-Doctoral Researcher

The Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED), is seeking an outstanding researcher for a Post-Doctoral Researcher position starting in September, 2009. CRED studies individual and group decision making under climate uncertainty and decision making in the face of environmental risk. We are an interdisciplinary center conducting laboratory and field research in the United States and around the world, involving collaboration between researchers (economists, anthropologists, psychologists, hydrologists, climate scientists, etc) and decision makers (water managers, farmers, etc.). CRED is affiliated with Columbia’s Earth Institute and the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP). This appointment will be in Columbia’s Psychology Department. For more information please visit: www.cred.columbia.edu

The post-doctoral researcher will report to the center’s co-directors David H. Krantz and Elke U. Weber and will collaborate with other center researchers, post-docs, and graduate students across disciplines.

The post-doc will conduct research on temporal discounting of social goals. More specifically, this project looks at how discount rates vary across different goal categories (money, health, safely, belonging, status, well being of others, environment) in order to analyze the long-term benefits of public policies relating to health, safety, and environment. The incumbent will be responsible for planning and carrying out lab research, field studies, and analysis, including development of methods for measuring temporal discount factors, establishment of baseline effects, quantitative comparison of discount rates for a variety of social and economic goals; analyses of both general pattern of responses, as well as individual and cultural differences. He/She we will be expected to employ a combination of distribution games, social dilemmas, and hypothetical scenarios about real life social, monetary and environmental outcomes. Aside from basic research, our work is also concerned with practical applications in policy and other real-world decision contexts. In an effort to apply theory and findings to a real socio-temporal dilemma, the post-doc will work on an energy conservation field study.

Other duties include contribution to other ongoing center projects; grant proposal writing; preparation of and participation in CRED workshops; drafting reports and papers for publication.

Required qualifications:
* Ph.D. in psychology (social, cognitive), behavioral economics, decision sciences, or other relevant discipline.
* Familiarity with theory of decision making in social and group contexts.
* Strong interest in climate and/or environmental science.
* Skilled in the use of laboratory-based experiments involving multi-player decisions and familiarity with various forms of field work (survey and interview techniques)
* Experience working as a member of interdisciplinary teams.
* Excellent skills in use of statistical software package (SPSS, R, STATA, SAS, or equivalent)
* Proficiency in computer programming (experimental games and online surveys).

Preferred qualifications:
* Publications
* Grant writing experience

Duration: This is a one-year position with possibility of renewal for a
second year conditional on performance and funding.

Please submit applications electronically to Jenn Logg at: jl3371 at columbia.edu

Applications should include the following: Cover letter, CV, 2 publications or writing samples, 2 recommendation letters (to be submitted directly by references)

And yet another at Columbia, once held by yours truly …

Columbia University’s Center for the Decision Sciences (CDS) anticipates hiring a postdoctoral fellow to serve as Associate Director for a period of a minimum of one year, renewable for one or two more years, with a start date of June or July 2009.

The Associate Director will carry out research, administer the Center and run the CDS Online Virtual Laboratory server. S/he should have a reasonable level of computer sophistication.

The main responsibility will be to carry out research related to cognition and memory with an emphasis on decision making and the construction of preferences across the lifespan, under the supervision of Professors Eric Johnson, Elke Weber, and Yaakov Stern. This position is open to candidates with behavioral research experience, data analysis and modeling skills, and training in cognitive psychology or a related discipline, who have recently earned their PhD or who are expecting their doctorate in 2009, on a topic relevant to the psychology of decision making broadly defined. Training in neuropsychology as well as neuroscience and fMRI research would be a particularly valuable skill. Additionally experience with health- and cognitive function screening of older adults and experience with on-line research is also a plus.

The candidate should be comfortable running a Linux Web server as well as coding HTML and dynamic scripting languages such as PHP and JavaScript. Experience with SQL, databases, SAS and lightweight UNIX systems administration and security is very much recommended but not essential.

To apply, please send a CV, two letters of recommendation, reprints of published papers, and a cover letter describing your research interests. In your cover letter, please describe your research expertise, data analysis and modeling skills, neuropsychological and neuroscience skills, and computer skills (including any experience with online research).

Review of applications will start December 15 and continue until the position is filled. Electronic applications (all parts as attachments to a single email) should be submitted to Amy Krosch, ak2562 at columbia.edu.